Most eyes are on California's Proposition 8 today, but Florida has a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage too -- only Amendment 2, as the measure's called, would also ban domestic partnerships even for non-gays. It's the same kind of "super-DOMA" that failed at the polls in Arizona in 2006, and Amendment 2 looks set to fail too: Although the latest Mason-Dixon poll shows 55% of likely voters in favor of it, the measure needs 60% of the vote to pass.
But five points isn't a comfortable margin, so Equality Florida has some 1,500 volunteers at polling places around the state. Advocate reporter Juan Carlos Rodriguez caught up with one of them, art dealer John Amat, at a Coral Gables voting site. Amat, 51, a tall, good-looking Cuban-American, said he was using his sales skills and "charming" manner to persuade voters waiting in line to pull the lever against Amendment 2. Yet in talking to them, he found that many didn't know what Amendment 2 was about.
That's where Amat's trusty prop came in: a front-page article from a recent Miami Herald that described how the broadly worded measure affects not just gay people but anyone who wants to enter into a domestic partnership. "The cards are not enough," he said, referring to literature against Amendment 2 he was passing out. So with the paper, he engaged voters in conversation. And it seemed to be working: while reporter Rodriguez watched, Amat managed to secure several commitments from voters to vote no.
"People will get this issue," Amat said, referring to why they should oppose Amendment 2. "It all depends on how hard volunteers work the line."
Indeed, leaders of the two campaigns to defeat the measure are counting on racking up big margins in South Florida, the traditionally liberal part of the state, to offset or surpass the large margins expected in favor of Amendment 2 elsewhere.
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